12/04 Links Pt2: Why Does America Spend So Much on Israel?; Anti-Normalization with Israel Is a Failed Policy that Only Hurts the Palestinians; Is the New Israel Fund anti-Zionist?

Crazy world: why are the Europeans determined to continue to pour money into the coffers of the most lethal terrorist state in the world, which has been waging a self-declared war against the west for four decades, threatens Israel with extermination and is hell-bent on building nuclear weapons?

Why is the French president Emanuel Macron posturing against western national identity, declaring America to be an enemy and presiding over the disintegration of his country’s internal security while his own citizens are rioting on the streets of Paris against his high-handed policies that treat them with such contempt?

Why has the desire to be part of a shared national identity in the west based on a common culture become tarred as a form of hateful, racist nationalism which threatens minorities – when in fact the opposite is the case ?

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired differences in strategy over Iran, Paris burning down and the nationalism/patriotism debate.

Over the past 22 months, we have focused on a comprehensive peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, irrespective of the plan, Palestinians deserve better lives than they currently have.

We know that the Palestinians are not interested in mere economic peace. Their leaders believe that if Palestinians get too comfortable economically, they would lose interest in the Palestinian cause.

Palestinians are living next door to one of the most technologically successful societies on the planet, yet the Palestinian leadership refuses to engage with Israel for the benefit of ordinary Palestinians. But the Palestinians need economic help now – with or without a peace agreement.

Months ago, in co-ordination with Palestinian, Israeli and American businesspersons, we developed a concept to bring hundreds of high-paying jobs to the West Bank. But the Palestinian leadership blocked the initiative – it’s normalization, they say.

This damaging Palestinian policy clouds all economic interaction between Palestinians and Israelis. It directly contradicts what Palestinians agreed to in Oslo. This anti-normalization policy has got Palestinians nowhere and continues to leave them further behind. Palestinians deserve better than calcified positions that have failed to bring peace and failed to bring jobs and opportunity.

Let’s be real – 136,000 Palestinians commute to work with Israelis every day because the opportunity is there. Anti-normalization is a failed policy that only hurts the Palestinians.

The PA has announced that the government of France recently donated 8 million euros to the “Palestinian government’s 2018 general budget”. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 13, 2018]. This donation brings France’s direct support to the PA’s general budget to 16 million euros (67,869,600 shekels) in 2018 .

The PA’s “general budget” is the source from which the PA pays salaries to terrorist prisoners and released terrorist prisoners and allowances to the families of dead terrorist “Martyrs.”

Despite the severe criticism of the PA practice by the international community on the one hand, and the PA’s constant complaints regarding its financial woes and the need for continued international monetary support on the other, the PA nonetheless allocated 1.237 billion shekels – or over 7% of the entire 2018 budget – to fund its terror rewarding practice.

In other words, France’s total 2018 contribution to the PA’s general budget funded more than 5% of the PA’s expenditure for what has been termed the PA’s “Pay for Slay” program.

The PA’s commitment to continue rewarding terrorism was clarified by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas who, in response to US and Israeli legislation designed to combat the PA policy, declared that terrorist salaries are top priority:

Hello there Mickey Gitzin, the CEO of the New Israel Fund. Three days ago CNN fired the channel’s commentator Marc Lamont Hill for calling to free Palestine “from the river to the sea,” which is an anti-Semitic call to destroy Israel. You’ve said many times, not only publicly but during our private conversations as well, that you oppose funding those who hold similar views. You’ve declared yourself a Zionist.

We had, and still have, our differences, but I’m convinced you meant every word you said. This is the reason why I defended the New Israel Fund when I felt the criticism leveled at your organization was unfair. The thing is, Gitzin my friend, that in the past, as well as now, the fund has shown support for its senior members—whose opinions are no less disturbing than those of Hill. Let me present you with several examples.

Human Rights Defenders Fund (HRDF), which is financed by the New Israel Fund, called Israel “racist,” “murderous,” and a “temporary Jewish Apartheid state.” It also supports the idea of liquidating Israel, under the guise of the “right of return.” The HRDF goes one step further and calls, as does Hill, to end the occupation “from the river to the sea.”

In the past, I drew your attention to the Combatants for Peace NGO, which are waging an online campaign that focuses on supporting the “right of return.” Both you and me know, Mr. Gitzin, that we are talking about the denial of Israel’s right to exist. They are not alone, as some of the B’Tselem heads have declared their support for the “right of return,” as well.

And the parade goes on. B’Tselem’s public council member claimed that Israel is “worse than the Nazi regime,” and that “it is not enough to only speak of the monster, something should also be done.”

At an event at the UN last week dedicated to lamenting the creation of a Jewish state, the Temple University professor and regular CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill gave a speech condemning Israel. He concluded by declaring, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Those familiar with this popular slogan know it to be a call for Israel’s violent destruction. Hill—who has since lost his job at CNN and issued a public apology—insisted that his words were innocuous: what could possible be objectionable about advocating liberty for the people who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? Quite a lot, replies David Schraub:

All [the slogan’s defenders] want, in Hill’s articulation, is a secular . . . state—not a “Jewish” state or a “Palestinian” state, but a state for all its citizens where all those permanently residing between the river and the sea enjoy the same rights. Just as America didn’t stop being America when it passed the Fourteenth Amendment or the Civil Rights Act, neither would Israel cease to be Israel if it changed its laws to provide for that vision of secular liberal equality. It would simply be an Israel with better laws and institutions than Israel has now. . . .

One interesting feature of this rejoinder, however, is that it suggests that the slogan . . . could just as easily run “from the river to the sea, Israel will be free.” Indeed, on a purely semantic level, that would seem to be the more accurate expression. The state that currently exists, and where the objectionable unfreeness currently obtains, is Israel. . . .

Nonetheless, I suspect that most of those who chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” would reject the substitution. This suggests that there is a replacement going on: Israel-with-better-laws is not viewed as the same thing as a free Palestine. . . . The [tell] is that the slogan does not refer to freeing Palestinians. It speaks of freeing Palestine—a territory, not a people. . . . When we speak of freeing a territory, we usually are speaking of a land that is under foreign dominion. . . . And this also explains why a slogan saying “Israel will be free” rings so odd: free from whom? . . .

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has accused CNN of “total acquiescence to pressure from the Zionist lobby” for its decision to sever ties with contributor Marc Lamont Hill, who called for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

The group claimed on Sunday that the “Zionist lobby controls most of the American media,” and invited the liberal pundit to visit “occupied Palestine.”

Hill, who is also a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, made the controversial remarks last week during a meeting of the United Nations on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

“We must advocate and promote non-violence,” he said in his comments. “We cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.”

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which is dominated by loyalists of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction, expressed full solidarity with Hill.

It invited him to visit “occupied Palestine” so that Palestinians would have a chance to express their appreciation and gratitude for him and “brief him on the suffering of the Palestinians and Israeli racist policies.”

The Palestinian group said it wanted to honor Hill for his “courageous positions.” CNN’s decision to sever ties with Hill, it added, was a “blatant violation of freedom of expression and blind bias in favor of the occupation and colonialism.”

On Monday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) spoke at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual summit on anti-semitism and hate, where he insisted “it’s not enough” to say you’re not anti-Semitic, you “must be anti-anti-Semitism.”

“If you love someone, it’s not enough to sit back and watch and be a bystander,” Booker told the audience. “Love means that you must be actively engaged in the affirmation and elevation of human dignity for all people.”

He added, “It’s not enough to say I’m not racist, you must be anti-racism. It’s not enough to say I’m not anti-Semitic, you must be anti-anti-Semistism.”

“Love is the active engagement in creating the beloved community and affirming dignity.”

“Our lives are our fortunes and our sacred honor. That’s what America needs right now. That scared honor. That revival of civic grace. That understanding that we must stand up for each other,” Booker said during the speech. “That bigotry has no place. That racism has no place. That anti-Semitism has no place.”

In a 2016 tweet, Booker shared a photo of the Million Man March that included a photo of Louis Farrakhan, contradicting his current comments.

The Johannesburg City Council on November 29 adopted a motion to rename Sandton Drive – a prominent thoroughfare in Johannesburg, which is home to most of South Africa’s 70,000-strong Jewish community – after Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. The move is not only hurtful to South African Jews and Israelis, but to all decent South Africans and people around the world.

It is also a direct offense to the US, whose consulate is currently situated on Sandton Drive.

The Haifa-born Khaled, 74, who now lives in Jordan, is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian and was one of the hijackers of TWA Flight 840 from Rome via Athens to Tel Aviv in 1969, and also took part in one of the four Dawson’s Field hijackings the following year.

The motion was presented by the ruling ANC and its far-left ally, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which argued that Joburg had “a responsibility to stand with the people of Palestine.”

EFF chairperson Musa Novela said, “It is our duty to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine against the oppressive state of Israel.” The initial motion was to rename the road “City of Ramallah, but following an amendment, it called for the road to be named after Khaled.”

Professor of Jewish and Holocaust studies at Columbia University Elizabeth Midlarsky is about the only one at the college who dares to identify herself openly as Jewish.

Let that sink in.

Remember, this is America. This is New York.

A few days ago she walked into her office to find it vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti. “They got me,” she told The Washington Post. “I’m afraid.”

The paper goes on to tell what happened, how she was shocked, how anti-Semitic incidents have skyrocketed by 60 percent throughout the land, but this was the stopper…this fact, when she says, “I’m a Jew at this college, one of the only ones who acts like a Jew.” The others? Are they hidden Jews?

Look up “Marranos.” Those were the Jews of Spain and Portugal in the Middle Ages who converted to Christianity by force, but kept to their Jewish faith in secret. (1)

Let it sink in, that something like this is happening in America – Jews in hiding, Jews afraid to walk with their heads held high…JEWS TREMBLING.

Arutz Sheva Editor Rochel Sylvetsky recently said something that shook me for its truth, its flash of clarity.

One day after Nancy Pelosi, likely the next speaker of the House of Representatives, told Israel advocates to rest easy with Democrats in control of the lower chamber, one of her newly elected party members announced support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement– and suggested a planned delegation trip to the West Bank.

Rashida Tlaib is the first Palestinian-American women ever elected to Congress. The Michigan lawmaker campaigned in favor of a two-state solution until just weeks before the midterm elections last month, when she backtracked from her support, and suggested to instead favor a one-state solution, with the Arab majority in control.

Now, in an interview with The Intercept, Tlaib publicly endorsed the BDS movement and announced she would refuse an annual trip to Israel hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for freshman congressmen, and instead will organize a competing delegation to “occupied Palestine.”

“I want us to see that segregation has really harmed us, [especially in] being able to achieve real peace in the region,” Tlaib said in the interview. “I don’t think AIPAC provides a real, fair lens into this issue. It’s one-sided. [They] have these lavish trips to Israel, but they don’t show the side that I know is real, which is what’s happening to my grandmother and what’s happening to my family there.”Tlaib also cleared up any doubts over her position on the BDS movement, which is currently the target of several bills making their way through Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. “I personally support the BDS movement,” Tlaib stated.

Tlaib is joined by at least two other freshmen congressmen who, throughout their campaigns, expressed deep animosity toward the Jewish State: Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Omar’s staff has said she supports the BDS movement, while Ocasio-Cortez has said she plans on highlighting Palestinian rights during her time in office.

On November 30, 2018, the website IsraellyCool posted an article asserting that Steven Fox, founder and CEO of Veracity Worldwide, a business intelligence company, had posted a number of antisemitic entries and comments on a public Facebook page.

Fox emphatically and categorically denies any connection to the Facebook page in question. “It’s a categorical impersonation of me,” Fox said over the phone and stated that he will soon be contacting the FBI and Israeli law enforcement in an attempt to discern who made the page. He also stated that he will be filing a complaint with Facebook itself to get the page taken down as soon as possible.

The entries are profoundly antisemitic. What made the article so astounding was that Fox is a successful player in the business intelligence community. Fox spoke about the impact of corruption on the international business climate at the World Economic Forum in the Philippines in 2014.

For a successful businessman to be willing to risk his career and destroy his reputation by posting such hateful commentary on a publicly available Facebook page simply astounded the imagination.

In an effort to determine whether or not the postings attributed to Fox were in fact posted by the Fox himself, CAMERA reached out by email and phone to Veracity Worldwide. In a phone conversation and in an email statement, Steven Fox categorically denied that the Facebook page that served as the basis for the IsraellyCool article is his.

Update 3:19 p.m. IsraellyCool has updated the article regarding Steven Fox, concluding that Fox is the victim of an antisemitic impersonator. The article can be seen here. The article states, “It does not seem reasonable that the antisemitic person behind the Steven Fox Facebook page would be the real Steven Fox in light of this new information.”

A group of 75 civil rights, education, Jewish and student groups praised Pitzer College President Melvin L. Oliver for disavowing a faculty vote to end the school’s year abroad program with the University of Haifa, according to a statement released Friday by the Amcha Initiative.

The Israel Project, which publishes The Tower, was one of the groups to sign the letter in support of President Oliver.

The faculty had voted last Wednesday to suspend the program with the Israeli university.

However, the next day, Oliver gave a speech sharply criticizing the vote at a meeting of the Pitzer College Council — a joint board consisting of students and faculty — calling a “repudiation of Pitzer’s values.”

Oliver added that “this [suspension] would be paltry support for Palestinian rights and a major blow to Pitzer College’s mission,” explaining that suspending the program was “inconsistent with Pitzer’s core values,” and that it would “foolishly alienate Jewish and non-Jewish constituents,” of the college, including alumni and donors.

Addressing one of the faculty’s pretexts for suspending the study abroad program at Haifa University, Oliver noted that Israel’s Supreme Court had said that Israel could not deny visas to students on account of views that they held.

Ever since Adolph Ochs purchased The New York Times in 1896, launching what eventually became the Sulzberger family dynasty that still presides over the newspaper, it has embraced Jewish assimilation. Judaism, for Ochs, was a religion only. Zionism was anathema to the Times, threatening to compromise the loyalty of American Jews to the United States. The restoration of Jewish statehood, two millennia after the destruction of Jewish national sovereignty in the Land of Israel, increased Times discomfort for publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Ochs’s son-in-law and successor. During most of the past seventy years, the Times has reflected the palpable uneasiness of the Sulzberger dynasty with the State of Israel.

As difficult as it might be to select the most obnoxious example of this distress, a recent Times opinion article surely deserves consideration. Entitled “The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah” (December 2), it was written by journalist Michael David Lukas, who had previously authored “A Skeptic’s Guide to Passover.” Clearly distressed by Zionism and Israel, he seems to find little value in Judaism other than as a target of his scorn.

After trying to persuade his young daughter of Hanukkah’s supremacy over Christmas, he realized that this was “a zero-sum game.” And Hanukkah was the zero once his “dual identity” as an American and a Jew became “a big deal for mostly assimilated Jews” like himself. Why? Long a holiday when Jews “spun tops and ate greasy food to commemorate what has to be one of God’s least impressive miracles,” he perceives Hanukkah as “a kind of Semitic sidekick for Christmas … a minor festival pumped up.” In his warped understanding, the Hanukkah story is nothing more than “an eight-night celebration of religious fundamentalism and violence.”

Indeed, Lukas professes to have discovered “a darker story in Hanukkah.” In his retelling, harmless Hellenized Jews (perhaps with himself in mind) were “mostly city-dwelling assimilationists who ate pork, didn’t circumcise their male children and made the occasional sacrificial offering to pagan gods.” But the dreaded Maccabees were “religious zealots … who practiced an ancient form of religious warfare.”

In the latest puerile and asinine op-ed from The New York Times about Jews and Judaism, novelist Michael David Lukas seeks to dampen the joyous energy of the festival of Hanukkah by adding a bummer liberal twist. In Hanukkah, he claims, we are celebrating the defeat of the pallbearers of Western culture at the hands of intolerant fundamentalist guerrillas. The Maccabees, he essentially argues, were a bunch of rightwing nuts. It’s just an “eight-night-long celebration of religious fundamentalism and violence” he declares, one based not on doughnuts or menorahs, but on “subjugating assimilated Jews.”

Lukas isn’t the first to make this silly claim.

A columnist for The Forward, just a few years ago, took it upon herself to sentence the Maccabees to the “wrong side of history.” The Washington Post listed “Hanukkah celebrates a fight for religious freedom” as one of its five Hanukkah myths. Those who make this argument seem to draw an implicit parallel between the Maccabees and the “other” fundamentalist death cults we see across the world today claiming divine commission to combat Western culture. They’re also parroting a theory that is according to both the Jewish and secular historical traditions, overwhelmingly baseless.

The Hasmonean revolt was not a fundamentalist- religious movement sworn to the destruction of liberal Western ideologies. It was, instead, a popular campaign to safeguard the freedom of a people to freely practice their faith and traditions regardless of the whims of an emperor. Unlike fundamentalist terrorist groups, which are born from intolerance of other faiths, the Maccabees fought to end the Greek intolerance of theirs.

Moreover, the Maccabees did not wage war against a mostly benevolent superpower encouraging religious, political and cultural reforms. Their mission, rather, was to stymie the very deadly plans of a megalomaniacal, absolutist dictator who drew no limits on the level of oppression and exploitation he would thrust upon the powerless citizens of a tiny client-state.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan instructed the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Monday to move ahead with a bill aimed at allowing the courts to force Facebook and other social media sites to remove certain content.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the so-called “Facebook incitement bill” removed from the Knesset docket in July after The Times of Israel found that the draft law went drastically further than was previously understood, even by the lawmakers pushing for it.

Netanyahu said at the time that the bill — put forward by Erdan and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — could be interpreted to grant powers so broad as to threaten freedom of speech.

The bill aims to empower the courts to issue an order for the removal of online content that constitutes a criminal offense or that could harm an individual’s or the country’s security.

In a letter Monday, leaked to the Calcalist business daily, Erdan urged Law and Justice Committee chairman Nissan Slomiansky (Jewish Home) to advance a leaner version of the proposed legislation, which would target content that could harm the security of an individual or the state but would drop mention of content that could harm the country’s economy or essential infrastructure.

Back in June the BBC News website reported that Israel had ‘blamed’ Iran for supporting the ‘Great Return March’ violent rioting along the Gaza Strip-Israel border which was then in its third month.

“Israel has accused Iran of fuelling recent violence on the Gaza border that has seen more than 100 Palestinians killed amid protests against Israel. […]

In the leaflets dropped on Gaza Israel’s military repeated its warning to Palestinians to not go near the heavily-fortified border fence.

“For your own benefit, it is better that you not participate in the violent riots at the fence, not attempt to breach it, and not permit Hamas to turn you into a tool to advance its narrow agenda,” the message said.

“Behind this agenda is Shia Iran, which has made it its mission to inflame tensions in the region for the sake of its religious and sectarian interests.”

Iran is a major supporter of Hamas, which it backs financially and militarily. The two sides fell out after Hamas refused to support Iran’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in the civil war in Syria, but they have since reconciled.”

As was noted here at the time BBC audiences were not provided with any substantial background concerning Iran’s backing of terror groups in the Gaza Strip in order to enhance their understanding of the Israeli statement.

Within Helm’s completely one-sided, tendentious and at times conspiratorial account of the recent violence between Hamas and Israel, were a few factual errors. We brought these to the attention of Indy editors who, after two weeks, have corrected one. (They’re still weighing the merit of our other complaints about the article).

Here’s the relevant sentence from the piece titled “Israel’s latest strikes on Gaza were deliberate attempts to prolong the suffering of Palestinians – and the world has fallen for it”, Nov. 13th:Israeli commandos launched a highly provocative incursion into Gaza aiming to kill or – more likely – to kidnap a commander of al-Qassem, Hamas’s military wing.

As we noted to editors, the allegation, that the mission in Gaza was designed to kidnap or kill a Hamas commander, was flatly denied by the IDF on the morning of Nov. 12th, and all major media outlets we monitored included this denial when citing these early, and completely unsubstantiated, Hamas claims. (In fact, since the article was published, Hamas themselves admitted that this wasn’t accurate.)

Though editors didn’t remove the false claim, they at least added Israel’s denial.

The new sentence is in bold:Israeli commandos launched a highly provocative incursion into Gaza aiming to kill or – more likely – to kidnap a commander of al-Qassem, Hamas’s military wing.

Israel deny [sic] reports that the operation was intended to kill or abduct militants in Gaza.

As has often been noted here – most recently in relation to the Airbnb story – according to the BBC’s chosen narrative, any place which fell on the Jordanian side of the 1949 ceasefire lines is ‘Palestinian land’ (regardless of the fact that the Armistice Agreement specifically stated that the ceasefire lines were not borders) and any community populated by Israelis in those areas is a ‘Jewish settlement’ in either ‘East Jerusalem’ or ‘the West Bank’ which is portrayed as being ‘illegal under international law’ regardless of its history.

There is no place at all in the BBC’s simplistic and politically partisan narrative for nuances such as the fact that Jews lived for centuries in the Old City of Jerusalem before being ethnically cleansed by the Jordanian army. Neither is there any room in that frequently promoted portrayal for facts concerning places such as Neve Ya’akov or Gush Etzion where Jews legally purchased land years before the belligerent Jordanian invasion.

Last week a 22 year-long legal case came to an end.

“The Israeli High court ruled that 522 dunams (129 acres) of disputed land near Kibbutz Rosh Tzurim in Gush Etzion does in fact belong to the Kibbutz and a subsidiary organization of the Jewish National Fund (JNF-KKL) […]

The JNF purchased the land in question in 1944 through a JNF subsidiary organization called Himnota. The Arab family who sold the land emigrated to South America.”

A kibbutz called Ein Tzurim was originally established on that land purchased in 1944 but it was destroyed in 1948 when Gush Etzion fell to the invading Jordanian army. Following the Six Day War, a new kibbutz named Rosh Tzurim was established in 1969 on the same site.

Newsround – described as the BBC’s “news magazine keeping young viewers up to date with the latest stories and events happening at home and abroad” – produced an article titled “Everything you need to know about St Andrew’s Day” on November 30th.

In a section sub-headed “Who was Saint Andrew?” the corporation’s younger audience was told that:

“We don’t actually know a lot about St Andrew.

It is believed that he was born between the years 5 AD and 10 AD in a place that’s now called Palestine, in the Middle East. […]

Andrew’s brother, Simon Peter, was also one of the disciples. They both lived in Galilee, where they were fishermen.”

According to Christian tradition – including the Vatican – St Andrew was indeed born in the Galilee district, possibly in Bethsaida, and fished in the Sea of Galilee.

Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn are increasingly concerned about walking the streets following the latest assault on a Jewish man in Williamsburg this past Shabbat, a prominent leader of the community told The Algemeiner on Monday.

“It’s terrible that one doesn’t feel safe stepping out of his home at any time of the day,” Rabbi David Niederman — president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn — said during a telephone interview.

Niederman noted that the community’s fears were more pronounced after 6 p.m. in the evening.

“People wonder, am I going to come back home or not? And what shape will I be in?” he said.

Rabbi Niederman said that the victim of Friday night’s attack had recovered from his ordeal. The 32-year-old man, identifiably Jewish from his haredi clothing, had been returning from Shabbat services with his young son when he stopped to greet a friend on Throop Avenue. Security footage showed the assailant running up behind the victim and then landing a sucker punch to the back of his head, forcing him to collapse instantly.

In a joint effort to tackle rising anti-Semitism in Great Britain, Europe and the United States, British soccer club Chelsea will travel to the United States next spring for a friendly match against the New England Revolution.

The game – part of Chelsea’s “Say No to Antisemitism” campaign – will be played at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, next May.

The game is a response to the recent synagogue shooting massacre in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were killed and seven more were wounded, and rising anti-Semitism in Europe.

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and New England Revolution Investor/Operator Robert Kraft, who are both Jewish, will each donate $1 million, in addition to all proceeds from the match, towards international community programs that combat anti-Semitism.

In May of this year, Abramovich received Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return after his British visa was not renewed.

“I am proud of the work Chelsea does to promote equality and tackle discrimination all over the world,” Abramovich said. “The ‘Say No to Antisemitism’ campaign has already achieved so much in raising awareness of this important issue, but there remains a lot of work to do. I am delighted to join forces with New England Revolution and Mr. Kraft in this initiative and we look forward to the match.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated the company’s commitment to fighting hate and used a Hebrew phrase to do so.

Cook invoked a phrase from Leviticus 19:16 in its original language on Monday at the Anti-Defamation League’s Never Is Now summit on anti-Semitism and hate.

“‘Lo ta’amod al dam re’eikha.’ Do not be indifferent to the bloodshed of your fellow man,” Cook said after receiving the ADL’s Courage Against Hate Award.

Cook, who is not Jewish, said in his address that the biblical mandate moves Apple to speak out on behalf of the rights of targeted groups, including immigrants and the LGBT community.

“It moves us not to be bystanders as hate tries to make its headquarters in the digital world,” he said.

Cook has slammed President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policies as “inhumane” and spoken publicly about being proud to be gay.

The Apple leader was speaking at the third annual Never Is Now summit, which addresses topics of anti-Semitism and hate in the world today. Some 1,300 people attended the one-day conference here, which featured presentations on anti-Semitism on campuses, immigration policies, diversity in the Jewish community and the forces driving modern anti-Semitism. (h/t Zvi)

Israel and China have expanded a protocol that helps finance Israeli exports to China by offering $500 million in government guarantees, Israel‘s Finance Ministry said on Monday.

The Israeli government has been encouraging companies traditionally drawn to western markets to focus energy on the huge markets to east, particularly China and India.

Since the first agreement was signed between the Israeli and Chinese governments in 1995, $2.1 billion of deals have been covered in the fields of health, agriculture, renewable energy, education and other sectors. It was last extended in 2010.

The “financial protocol” is an agreement that facilitates faster export deals from Israel to China, the Finance Ministry said. Under it, Israeli banks can receive government guarantees if they finance Chinese importers with long-term credit for buying Israeli equipment.

In August 2017, Škoda announced a technology scouting outpost in Israel, with the intention of investing in local automotive and smart mobility startups, in partnership with Skoda’s Israeli importer Champion Motors Ltd.

In May, Skoda announced collaborations with four Israeli startups, one of them being Anagog and in July, the company announced a $1.5 million investment in the startup. Thursday’s announcement expands the partnership with the Tel Aviv-based startup, which develops artificial intelligence technology that can track drivers and predict their needs based on data from their mobile phones.

Chakratec, founded in 2013, develops a kinetic battery device, which stores energy using a flywheel instead of relying on chemical compounds like in lithium-ion batteries. The company raised $6.4 million to date.

UVeye, founded in 2016, develops machine learning and computer vision technology for automatic external inspection of vehicles. The company raised $4.5 million to date.

Pastor John Hagee, the founder and national chairman of Christians United for Israel, said during a panel at the 2018 Israeli-American Council conference that being anti-Semitic is incompatible with Christianity.

The panel, which featured Maccabee Task Force Executive Director David Brog, Christians United for Israel Action Fund Founding Chairwoman Sandra Hagee Parker and Fuel Freedom Foundation co-founder Yossie Hollander as panelists and moderated by Israeli-American Council Board Chairman Adam Milstein, discussed how to combat anti-Semitic hate movements in the United States.

Toward the end of the discussion, Milstein asked Hagee to speak, prompting the pastor to get up from seat, turn to the crowd, and state: “There is no such thing as Christian anti-Semitism.”

“A Christian is someone who’s driven by the love of God, and anti-Semitism is driven by hate,” Hagee said. “Love and hate do not come from the same blood.”

Hagee added that an anti-Semitic Christian is a “hypocrite” who doesn’t understand that Christianity is derived from Judaism.

“Judaism does not need Christianity to explain its existence,” Hagee said. “But Christianity cannot explain its existence without Judaism.”

Thursday’s pro-Israel conference at the European Parliament in Brussels can be seen as the exception that proves the rule.

An Israeli delegation from the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, including Likud MK Yehudah Glick and caucus director Josh Reinstein, will participate in an event organized by the European Christian Political Movement, in cooperation with the European Coalition for Israel and the Israel Allies Foundation.

The event will be hosted by European Parliament members Bastiaan Belder, Arne Gericke and Branislav Škripek of the ECPM, a political party that unites national parties from across Europe which share Christian democratic politics.

The event will highlight what organizers call the growing support for Israel in the European Union.

The conference’s two seminars are entitled “EU, Israel and European Jewry – the next 15 years,” and “The future of Israel – EU relations and from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe.”

Topics discussed will focus on the antisemitic nature of the BDS movement in Europe, economic cooperation between Israel and Europe, and the threats to European Jewry.

Proud to attend the first ever World Jewry March in #Jerusalem sponsored by the Israeli Gov’t to strengthen the ties among Israel and the Diaspora. A fitting time to recall the life of President #GeorgeHWBush who did so much to save the Jews of Ethiopia and the Soviet Union. pic.twitter.com/Z8iFTxUTwR

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